Posted on 09/02/2011 9:07:47 AM PDT by marshmallow
Minneapolis, Minnesota (CNN) –Prior to 2006, few people even knew that then-Minnesota state legislator Keith Ellison was a Muslim. Because of his English name, he said, no one thought to ask.
But five years ago, when he ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives - a race he would go on to win - word of his religious affiliation began to spread.
“When I started running for Congress it actually took me by surprise that so many people were fascinated with me being the first Muslim in Congress,” said Ellison, a Democrat now serving his third term in the House.
“But someone said to me, ‘Look Keith, think of a person of Japanese origin running for Congress six years after Pearl Harbor–this might be a news story.’”
Though Ellison's status as the first Muslim elected to Congress is widely known, fewer are aware that he was born into a Catholic family in Detroit and was brought up attending Catholic schools.
But he said he was never comfortable with that faith.
“I just felt it was ritual and dogma,” Ellison said. “Of course, that’s not the reality of Catholicism, but it’s the reality I lived. So I just kind of lost interest and stopped going to Mass unless I was required to.”
It wasn’t until he was a student at Wayne State University in Detroit when Ellison began, “looking for other things.”
(Excerpt) Read more at religion.blogs.cnn.com ...
Start???? That has been a repeatedly tried and failed practice of the many anti-Catholics who troll these threads for as long as I have been associated with Free Republic.
I thought ya'll said there is no "official Protestant Teaching". We have been lectured over and over again, that the concept of a magisterium is heresy so there is no teaching authority within Protestantism. Each person is free to choose his or her own interpretations and establish the doctrines that "feel right" to them.
1 Cor. 1:14 I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius; 15 Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name.
“lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name”. Not that he didn’t baptize or believe he needed to, just that among that group, because there were contentions of who they followed by who baptized them, that he hadn’t baptized many of them. Picture if you will a man saying “I baptized people but I’m glad I didn’t baptize you because you would have said it was in my name.
Of course his first directive was to “preach the gospel” but that didn’t negate the need to be baptized nor does he say that.
Please understand that I understand where you are coming from. Our understanding makes it difficult to differentiate between the physical (carnal) and the spiritual. Keep in mind that Jesus also instructed to “this do in remembrance of me” when He instituted the Lords Supper or communion. That also is a physical action denoting a spiritual truth. Was that also done away with?
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But it changes nothing in the relationship of the Body of Christ. We know what saves and what doesn't. And what is our calling. And water baptism changes none of that. Praise God!
And I am saying all this as a person who was water baptized. Shocking, I know. It's the doing it for an outward show, or to make one a member of a particular denomination that made me start studying the dispensation of grace message. Maranatha! smvoice
The word belly is used in the KJV but other translations say “from within him” or “out of his heart”
Water as spirit. Spirit as water.
I think that God has used the physical world He created for many things in His relationship with His people and later with all of His children.
Jesus was/is God’s ultimate use of the physical world. He was truly man, physical in nature and not just spiritual as some have believed.
Water is life. Our physical bodies cannot live without it.
In the same way the Spirit is life for our souls.
I think that is why we see water and the spirit mentioned together so often.
Our bodies are about 60% water, the brain slightly more at 70% and the blood even more than that at 80%. I don’t think that is a coincidence.
We have a physical body and a soul. Water and spirit.
We know also that water gives life to the earth, without it we have no food to sustain our bodies. There are no trees to cleanse our air. The more abundant the water in any place, the more life there is.
So, I see water as necessary for physical life and the spirit as necessary for the life of the soul.
What is Jesus saying here? That He is the source of life.
And when one believes in Him one will have an abundance of life and an abundance of grace poured out upon them that will flow out of them like a river.
I find this verse especially interesting in light of the water and blood that came from the side of Jesus when He was pierced by the sword on the cross.
Notice that John 5 speaks of “water and the Spirit” as two separate and distinct entities.
John 7 speaks of the Spirit flowing as “living water” - one entity.
Ephesians 5 is not really germane to this.
Water is SYMBOLIC of the Holy Spirit.
Water baptism following conversion is an outward, physical symbol of the inward act of grace that the believer has already experienced.
Physical circumcision didn’t save. Water baptism doesn’t save.
The Law didn’t save. No set of rules and regulations we establish on our part in place of the Law can save either.
If neither circumcision nor the Law which were both established by God Himself can save, nothing that man conjures up that he thinks will replace God’s commands will save either.
Second, God uses DISTINCTIVE terms to designate the various items of good news: "the gospel of the kingdom" (Matt. 9:35), "the gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:24),"the gospel of the circumcision" (Gal. 2:7), "the gospel of the uncircumcision" (Gal. 2:7), "my gospel" (Rom. 2:16), etc. Surely if God DISTINGUISHES between these gospels they cannot be exactly the same.
God has revealed His good news to man progressively. From Adam, to Abraham, and all down through the OT Scriptures we find God proclaiming more and more good news to man. Finally the Lord sent His apostles to proclaim "the gospel of the kingdom" (Luke 9:1-6), but pay careful attention, at that time they DID NOT EVEN KNOW THAT CHRIST WAS TO DIE. With this in mind, read Luke 18:31-34.
After the apostles had been preaching "the gospel" for maybe two years or more, they did NOT HAVE the SLIGHTEST IDEA what the Lord was talking about when He predicted His death. Obviously then, "the gospel" which they preached was NOT "the gospel" which Paul later preached. Or "the gospel" by which we are saved. (1 Cor. 15:1-4).
"The gospel" which Peter and the 11 preached was "the gospel of the kingdom" (Matt. 9:35, Luke 9:2), not "the preaching of the cross".(1 Cor. 1:18).
Just a few examples to mull over..BTW: I love WHY?, too. It leads to study and study leads to learning.
Paul did not start his public ministry until 14 years after his conversion. He had spent 30 years in Jerusalem and was an ardent religious Jew. He persecuted the Christians and Acts 9 clearly states that he was on his way to arrest Christians. On the way he had a vision of the risen Christ who spoke to him asking Paul why he was persecuting him. So it’s obvious that Paul was baptizing after Christ’s resurrection.
>>Paul also circumcised Timothy. Does that mean that the saints were all circumcised?<<
He has Timothy circumcised so he doesn’t offend the Jews. Paul says in 1 Corinthians Chapter 9, To the Jew I became as a Jew; to the Greek I became as a Greek. He’s not comprising the gospel. Timothy is already saved, so he’s not saying, Timothy, you are not saved unless you get circumcised, but it’s so as not to give an offense to some of these Jews.
And still you take the belief of one Protestant and apply that belief to all Protestants. Hmmm!
Yet you focus on the physical water of baptism?
Did you read Ex. 29:4, cf. Ex.19:5,6; Isa. 61:6, and Mattl.3:1-6)? It was given to a nation who become a kingdom of priests. Water baptism was part of that covenant, to become a priest. The Gospel of the Kingdom is about Israel becoming that kingdom of priests. Of COURSE they would be baptized with water. It was a command of the Davidic Covenant. As long as God was dealing with Israel as a nation in Acts, it was done as to not offend the Jews.
So do you believe it was the physical water that healed or the Spirit?
Not when it was done to the Gentiles. Paul had Timothy circumcised because Timothy was of Jewish origin having a Jewish mother. That’s where the “not to offend” comes from. It’s clear that if any Gentiles thought to be circumcised it was seen as “going back under the law”. Not so with Timothy.
There are 600 million "Protestants" united only by a single doctrine; the protestation against the authority of the Pope and all such religious authorities. I was referring to what they have in collectively common (the obligatory opposition to the authority of the Pope and Magisterium) not the resulting tens of thousands of doctrinal differences determined by their Pope in the mirror.
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